


Even Now

by CrabOfDoom



Series: Breath After Breath [4]
Category: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst, Manipulation, Other, Suicidal Thoughts, emotional stress, psychological abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 10:59:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11508009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrabOfDoom/pseuds/CrabOfDoom
Summary: A mental report on the whereabouts of one General Safay Roth [Killed In Action].





	Even Now

**Author's Note:**

> Even now, when I never hear your name  
> and the world has changed so much since you've been gone  
> even now, I still remember and the feeling's still the same  
> and this pain inside of me goes on and on  
> even now, when I have come so far, I wonder where you are  
> I wonder why it's still so hard without you  
> even now, when I come shining through, I swear, I think of you  
> and god, I wish you knew

I don't know how I've survived these past months.

I was betrayed by someone who told me to trust him. Like an idiot, I did. I was stabbed, and rolled out of the back end of a cargo transport, and left for dead. I can't be certain that he thought that would be the end of me. Clearly, it wasn't. I've been there before. Not being disposable to the empire that created me; that was new. But lying in the tall grass of some wilderness, my whole side ripped open and bleeding and beginning to attract the distant attention of feral things, while so many broken bones shrieked with a pain that made being eaten half-alive sound like a rational option... We've met.

I'm not quite as good as they say. I never was. The clean attacks and brutal efficiency, those are just yarns spun for the public in newspapers. I've always been a mess. There's blood everywhere when I work, and half of it is usually mine. But I'm stronger. More determined. And I know what I'm doing.

Phoenix downs sounded like a good idea, when I was still in training, and I bought one as soon as I could. It took everything I had at the time, but that was alright. What else did I have to save for? Potions were good enough for a while, but one day I needed that down, and I used it. I wasn't about to die within Niflheim's borders. The Zegnautus labs would've had my body reclaimed. Cut open, then cut into a hundred pieces to be studied. Each in its own little jar. On a shelf. In Niflheim, forever.

The down's flames saved my life. The other guy? Not so much.

I haven't gone into a fight without one since. How many have I used? Hell, I don't know. There have been eight so far, just this year. Probably twenty, the last. A couple of years were worse, I'm sure. I may fight to avoid severed limbs, or being beheaded--that's just common sense--but I don't fight to avoid the cuts, stabs, and slashes. Everyone else does. That's how I win. Well, that, and the downs.

So soft and thin and easy to hide in tall boots, like mine. Grab the quill, pray to Etro, and wait. I know how I've survived the past twenty-six years.

I don't know how I've survived these past months.

I'd drink, but I don't like the taste. When I have gotten drunk, I only end up fixating on the very thing I was trying to forget. It doesn't even last long. I supposed I'm spliced from too many parts for the alcohol to latch on to anything. Just as well. It's gil better spent on downs and gas.

I haven't been a soldier for half a year. It's not what I expected. I still fight, but my opponents are largely rogue wildlife and daemons. I hunt for bounties. I sell carcasses to marketplace butchers, and bones to other hunters. I don't know if I do well or not; if I'm good at the business or not. Maybe they all know, and take advantage of me. Then again, they know what I do and how I do it. It's just as possible that they wouldn't dare try.

I work at night and through dawn, when I don't have to have my bangs in my face to keep the sun from hurting my eyes. When I don't need the steel cuffs over the shells of my ears, to keep them from burning in the sunlight. When daemons plod through meadows and streets and there's no living thing out there with them, but me. I'm sure other hunters wonder. I'm sure they talk.

Sefa the Fearless, I've overheard. It didn't sound like a compliment. It sounded like a warning.

I wonder, myself, about the name I've taken. Is it too obvious? Too common? Too feminine? Do they know it isn't mine? Do they know who I used to be? No one mentions these things. I suppose, then, that it means they're alright. Answers would be good, someday. When there's someone I can trust again.

That's the biggest difference, I guess. I'm surrounded by so many things when I'm awake, but in the boarding rooms, in a caravan, in my two-room flat, there's only nothing. That used to be my life. I know it was. I knew it well. Sometime over the past ten years, I'd forgotten. The void had known light, the barren had blossomed, the empty had become so full and warm. I had a reason to keep coming back from the dead, and you were that.

And then you weren't.

He said I was beneath you. He said you'd grown tired of me. He said our emperor, our master, had decided that if your sister was to marry to force a peace, then so should you, to force an alliance. He said that that life of power and privilege was where you belonged. Where you wanted to be. More than you wanted to be with me. He said so many horrible things. Hurtful things. True things. He said them, and then he stabbed me, to be rid of the garbage that had piled up in the corner. So you wouldn't have to do it, yourself.

I don't know how I've survived these past months.

I thought of dying often, when I was small. Of how would be good and how would not. Of where I might rest forever, and where I could never dare let myself give in. I was prepared. Or, as prepared as a child soldier was ever going to be.

I didn't have those thoughts anymore, once you were there. I had a prince to protect, whether you'd love me for it, or not. I had new days to look forward to. I had nights that I wanted to live in forever. I had to live through my missions because to leave you alone and disappointed would have been so much worse.

It appears that that ended, with his sword in my back. I considered dying there, on the grass. The daemons and animals would scatter me well enough to ensure that I was never found. And yet, I wondered. If he'd lied about being able to trust him, could he lie also about your change of heart? It felt like a chance worth taking, and I pulled a down.

Weeks passed, and no one had come looking for me. No one asked about me. No one mentioned Safay Roth. Not once. Nowhere. I didn't care if I'd been so awful that all of Eos was relieved to be rid of me. I did care that you seemed to have sided with them. And for the first time in ten years, I wanted to die.

I stopped listening to the news, and then to the radio completely. I couldn't bear to hear your name. No one ever mentioned your wedding, your marriage, your treaty, and that much was a blessing. It didn't stop me from thinking about it. Not completely.

I could kill her. Easily. I planned out how. If I wanted to show her mercy, for merely being a pawn; if I wanted to make her suffer, just because I could. If I wanted to pin her to the door of Altissia's First Secretary's mansion, with a sword through her heart, as a warning to Niflheim to never, _ever_ fuck with me again.

But to you, I'd be a monster. I'd be no better, getting rid of her, than the man who thought death would get rid of me. You'd have been robbed of the life you deserve, for the second time, and by my hands. And you'd never forgive me.

The hero that you don't believe lives within you would come out, and you might try to get between us. I could harm you. I could kill you. And I'd never forgive myself.

Sometimes, I think that I could still be your affair. I can keep secrets. You know this. And if you've grown tired of me, you'll grow tired of her. I'm not 'the general' anymore. My missions, my time are my own. My truck is a pitiful-looking specimen, but it runs well, and at your order, it would carry me to wherever you are. Nothing on Eos would hold me back. Whenever you wanted me, you could have me. Even now. And yet, you have to know this, too. And not once have you come around to claim what was sworn to you, years ago.

I suppose the conventional wisdom is that, if you won't come to me, I should go to you. It's logical, but impractical. Impossible. As many times as I've run headlong at things that could easily kill me, I find only cowardice when it comes to facing you again, uninvited, and finding out for certain that he wasn't lying to me. That your patience with me ran out. That there's really a wife and children; a family you've rebuilt, that I would be destroying. "Who is that?", they'd ask you. What else could you possibly tell them? "No one." Would it even be a lie? No. I couldn't bear it. I can't do it.

The last time I heard someone else speak your name, you were now a high commander. You're still in the army, marriage or no. Going to you would almost certainly mean going back to Niflheim. To Gralea. To the damned Keep. I can't do that, either. If he thinks I'm dead, I'm free for as long as I stay away from imperial territories. Going back to Niflheim is the single stupidest thing I could do. The one thing in all the world that I think I fear more than never seeing you again. Particularly, when you would know how scared I am of what dying in Niflheim would mean; when you could come to me. But for half a year, you haven't wanted to do that. Or you would have by now. ...Right?

I have nothing to remember your face, or that you were ever in my life. We couldn't risk photos together, or letters, or cards, or rings. What few unmarked mementos I had, that only you and I would recognize for what they were, are still in Niflheim. I never took them with me because I didn't know that that was the day I'd never be coming back, and I held them too dear to risk losing them in some random corner of the world. So, I lost them, anyway, right where I left them. Go, me. They've probably been thrown in the incinerator as trash, by now. There's nothing now, but the constant ache, to know that you were ever real. Nothing to prove that I ever knew you, but my word.

My memory of you is eating me alive. The blood and dirt is still on my skin a week later, again. I try to be "one of" the hunters, but end up sitting against the wall and saying nothing, staring at nothing. Sometimes, for hours. The old women at the outposts, they seem to understand that everything inside is shattered and broken and sharp and bleeding, but I can't bring myself to talk about it. Everyone else thinks there's something wrong with me. I can't truthfully say that there isn't.

They stay out of my way on hunts. They know I'm only rational once I've killed something, and they don't want it to be them. Some days, it's cathartic, and I'm alright for a while. Other days make me think of going to Altissia, or Galdin Quay, just to burn them down. If you don't want to come back, what difference does it make, what you think of me? Why _shouldn't_ I be a monster? At least then, I'd understand why you don't want me anymore. And it would be so much easier, wouldn't it? To let myself fall apart instead of trying to hold it all together, for no comprehensible purpose? Every time I fall asleep, I wonder why I don't. Every time I wake up, I wish that I could.

I don't know how I've survived these past months.

Hell, I don't know how I'm going to survive tomorrow.


End file.
